


I will love you endlessly

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (hi have some smutty domestic fluff), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, I also probably needed the non-smoker’s equivalent of a cigarette, In which my established relationship kink my pregnancy kink and my abo kink, Pregnancy, all get together and have drinks, tfw they boned so much in the other abo fic that I needed to write rey getting pregnant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-16 23:42:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14821143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: He knows her scent better than he knows anything else in the world.And the scent coming off her pillow is not her scent.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi,,,,uhhh,,,, have another ABO fic. 
> 
> The title comes from [Endlessly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27agJjqaozY) and was suggested by meritmut.
> 
> Thanks so much to [politicalmamaduck](http://politicalmamaduck.tumblr.com) for betaing this one! 
> 
>  
> 
> Also, she commented on this a few times but I could think of no non-clunky way to clarify so I’m sticking this in an author’s note: “stand up” is a term for a type of meeting that happens frequently in the tech industry (and possibly other industries, but my experience with it has come from tech ppl). It’s a short meeting, usually where participants go around the room and give brief updates. The meeting is so short that ideally people don’t have time to sit down before it’s over (hence “stand up”). So there’s your jargon definition fun-fact for the day!

She wakes before Ben does every morning.  She’s always been the easy riser of the two of them.  ( _“I sleep light,_ ” she joked the first time he’d woken her in the night in full Rut, needing her and needing her _now_.  Ben, when he sleeps, sleeps like the dead.)  She opens the curtains for him—he finds it easier to wake when the natural light is creeping into the bedroom (he dreads the dark mornings of winter) and goes to put coffee on, humming tunelessly to herself.

Some days, she’ll be out of their house and off to work before he is even out of bed.  Today is one of those days. 

Ben groans his way awake. He can smell the coffee that she brought to put on his bedside table ( _“You don’t have to do that,_ ” he had told her the first time she’d done it.  “ _I like taking care of you.  You take care of me.”_   How sweet it had been for her to say it, to mean it, without bringing designation into it.)

 _Up_ , he tells himself.  _Up.  Come on.  Up. You sack of shit._

And he sits up, hand reaching blindly for the coffee.  It’s still decently warm and he downs it all in one gulp, hissing as he swallows because it’s instant coffee and he hates instant coffee.  He notices a note by the mug and reads it.

_We ran out of the good coffee yesterday and I forgot to get some at the store.  I’ll pick some up tonight.  xx_

He smiles to himself and gets to his feet and checks his watch.  He doesn’t have stand up until ten anyway, and he is usually online before most of the other members of his team—the blessing and the curse of working remotely.  So he is totally justified, he decides, in going out to get himself a nice cup of coffee and—hell—he’ll pick up the coffee beans from the store too. 

He gets dressed, and begins to make the bed—his chore, since he’s the late sleeper—and he freezes when he gets to Rey’s side.

He knows her smell. He’d know it anywhere.  He lives and breathes her scent ever since he’d asked to claim her, blushing like an eleven-year-old.  It’s the due north of his life, every instinct in his body points towards it, towards her.  It lightens his darkness, it calms his storms, it reminds him that he is not alone, not anymore.

He knows her scent better than he knows anything else in the world.

And the scent coming off of her pillow is not her scent.

 

-

 

_Rey’s cries are muffled, her face pressed into the pillow as he ruts into her.  He loves her like this, her ass in the air, her back smooth and broad before him as he grinds his hips into hers, as their skin slaps together so very sweetly._

_She’s so fucking wet and the scent of her is so thick in the air that he feels both like he can’t breathe and like he can’t breathe anything but her at the same time.  This—this is what it’s supposed to be like—no suppressants, nothing but him and his mate, fucking themselves into oblivion._

_Has anything ever felt more right than the smooth way she feels as he sinks into her?  Her cunt is so slick it’s positively silky and that slick is dripping down her legs to soak the sheets beneath him because she needs him so fucking badly right now. And every thrust sends his cock right into her cervix and he knows—knows because she’s told him, breathless and panting after one of his knots—that it sends a jolt up her spine to her throat, stoking the heat in her glands until she’s positively writhing and begging and kneading into the bed with her fingers and toes._

_She comes three times on his dick before he knots her and when he does, he collapses forward, crushing her into the mattress, laughing breathily into her ear while she pants._

_“Want to take bets?”_

_“You’re confident, aren’t you?”_

_He nips at the gland in the side of her neck and she moans and he feels her cunt contract around his dick.  “You don’t play fair—that doesn’t seem like a good bet to take.”_

_“Don’t play fair?” he asks, his hand pushing its way between her and the mattress to find her clitoris._

_“_ Ben _.”_

_It’s a sigh, not a protest.  She’s in Heat and every overture towards pleasure is one that will set her off again.  She cants her hips slightly to give him better access and a moment later—because she’s so very hot and Ben knows what to do with her, he’d be the least deserving alpha in the world if he didn’t know how to work her clit while she was in Heat—she’s gasping and panting and writhing under him on the bed, his teeth nipping at her gland as he glorifies in the special flavor that orgasm brings to her scent._

_“I’m betting it’ll take one heat,” he whispers in her ear. “Just one.  Then you’ll be pregnant with our kid.”  If he weren’t still coming inside her, his knot locking his cum in place inside her, the mental image of Rey bloated with his child would have him spinning into sweet oblivion._

_Instead he’s already there._

_And so is she as she pulls herself away from his lips just enough to kiss the corner of his mouth._

 

-

 

Ben’s hand is jittery as he settles down before his company issued laptop and types in his password. He’d gotten an extra large cup of coffee to wash away the taste of the instant and he has fifty-eight different messages waiting for him in the company chat, but he ignores them all. Rey hasn’t texted him back, which likely means she’s under a car right now.  He glances at his phone.

 _Don’t have caffeine,_ he’d texted her before getting in the car, words shining white on blue across the screen of his phone.  Then, he’d added, _Also I’m picking up the coffee don’t worry about it._   Mixed signals galore, but she likes teasing him about that.

He still has half an hour before stand up, and, mostly because he’s jittery, he calls home.

It doesn’t surprise him when no one answers.  His mother, a workaholic (he comes by it naturally), will likely be in the office, and his father, always on the move, is probably somewhere halfway across the country. He feels like he’s a teenager again, his body changing, his hormones rioting and turning to Mom for answers. 

“ _It just keeps itching_ ,” he’d told her, scratching at the gland on his neck.  Itching had been the best word he could think of for it.  There wasn’t a good way to say  _throbbing all the time and every time I touch it it makes my penis hard but if I don’t touch it I get angry_.  His dad had never understood that.  His dad had always just asked if he’d taken his suppressants.  How he had hated that—how it still makes him bitter.  His dad’s a beta, his dad never understood, thought the easy solve was just the medication the endocrinologist had prescribed him when he’d started going through puberty and that would be that. As if it could be that easy.

His mom, when she’d had time for him—and she didn’t have time for him most of the time—had at least listened.  He sighs, and hangs up, and texts her.

_If you have a moment today, please call._

He doesn’t expect her to call.  She never has a moment.

He glances at his calendar. His day is clear for the most part. Most of his one-on-ones are later in the week, leaving today oddly and blissfully open to code.  So long as he steers clear of the bedroom and that perplexingly different scent, he should be fine. 

They have a rule: Rey is not allowed in his office, and he’s not allowed at the garage unless he’s picking her up, and even then he is supposed to wait outside in the car.  “ _I need to be able to focus and I can’t if there’s the scent of you,”_ he’d told her.  He hadn’t been nervous.  He had known she’d understand.  And she had. With a laugh, she had kissed him and said, “ _You need your alpha cave, don’t you.”_

_“I wouldn’t call it a cave.  We have evolved since then.”_

_“Alpha office.”_

_“More accurate.”_

He’d come out of his office the next day to find that she’d taped a sticky note to his door that read _alpha office.  no omegas. :-)_ and had rolled his eyes as he’d made his way to the kitchen to cook her dinner.

He clicks on the meeting invite for KOR STAND UP and waits for the rest of his team to get into the room and join the video call.  There are six of them in the main office and when they turn on the video conference, they’re all chatting happily and laughing.

“Heya boss,” Jesh grins over at him.  “Happy Tuesday.”

“Happy Tuesday?”

“How’s the ranch?” Ben doesn’t live on a ranch—he lives in a quiet little house in the woods by a river (“ _I just want to live somewhere green,_ ” Rey had whispered and with her words it was all Ben had wanted too, anything— _anything_ —for his omega), but the one time he’d worked from his uncle’s ranch they’d all gotten it into their heads that he had a pack of cattle that he was raising and that was why he worked remote.

“Quiet,” Ben replies. “How’s the office?”

“Not quiet,” snorts Ched.

“This shit with the sales re-org isn’t going to hit us, right?”

“Snoke hasn’t said anything,” he shrugs.  If his hand weren’t so jittery he’d have made himself another cup of coffee and would take another sip of it.  He thinks he looks calmer when he’s casually taking a sip of coffee and if there’s one thing he has learned managing his team, it’s that looking calm—even when he’s not calm—helps keep _them_ calm.  “I can’t imagine it’d hit the core team, though.  Unless Hux starts promising shit that’s off the roadmap and that starts to fuck with engineering.  Are people saying things in the office?”

“Mostly in accounts,” says Wyott. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Ben says.  “If it turns into a thing, I’ll let you know.  What have people got?”

They go around the room, telling him what they’re planning to work on during their next two-week sprint, while Ben sits there with his hand twitching under the table.  He’d had too much coffee and it’s all he can do not to look at his phone right now to see if Rey has texted him back. 

When it gets to be his turn, he pauses.  “I’m gonna be checking in with the security team about what in the hell they are actually planning because they’ve given me nothing that makes sense.”  That earns an appreciative laugh from the room.  “But I’m probably going to do that tomorrow. I may be taking part of today.”

“Everything ok, boss?” Moka asks.

“Some family stuff,” he shrugs.  “Also it’s beautiful and I want to go for a walk and shirk all responsibility to you people.”

“As any of us would do,” Tunnir says, and Ben grins at him. 

“Text me if you need me.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

He kills the call, and almost immediately regrets the decision to not work today.  Now all he’ll have to do is wait for Rey to text him, or his mom to call him, and sure, it’s beautiful outside, but chances are he’ll end up pacing his office because it’s the only place in the house that doesn’t smell like Rey. (“ _What happens if you want to bend me over your desk?”_ she’d asked teasingly, her hand rubbing along his shaft.  “ _The kitchen table will have to satisfy,”_ he’d managed to reply before pulling her lips to his.)

His phone buzzes and it’s a text from Rey.

_?_

_Don’t have caffeine_

_Did you read something on the internet to make you paranoid?_

_Just humor me today, please_

_Is this your new kink?  Me too exhausted to do anything and all lenient and whatnot?  I thought you liked me feisty._

_I do, just no caffeine today._

_Payback for the instant coffee?_

_Got it in…three._

_What’s going on, Ben?_

He swallows.  He doesn’t want to put it into words, not when he has no one to tell him if he’s right, even though every instinct in his body is screaming that he’s right. 

_I’m gonna run to the pharmacy later. Need anything?_

_Ben Solo, give me a straight goddamn answer this isn’t me thinking you’re being cute and evasive I’m worried._

Well.  He can’t really say he’s surprised.

_I’d really rather talk about it in person._

A moment later his phone is ringing in his hand and he sighs as he answers.

“What’s this about?” she asks and she sounds both concerned and angry in that particularly Rey way.

“Look, I—” he cuts himself off.  He wants to hold her, to smell her.  If he smells her, then he’ll know it’s real, not just the vestiges of her on a pillow and on their sheets.  “I really want to talk about it in person.”

“You’re freaking me out, you know.”

“I know.”

“Is it a big deal?” she asks and he swallows.

He can’t lie to her. “Yeah,” he whispers quietly. “Yeah, it could be a big deal.”

A moment later he hears Rey calling, “Unkar, I’m not feeling good.  I’m gonna head home for the day.”

“Rey, you don’t have to—”

“If you’re going to be like this I do.  You’re freaking me out, Ben.  What did you need from the pharmacy?  I’ll stop by on my way home?”

He closes his eyes and goes out into the living room and flops down on the couch.  It smells like her—the scent he’s used to, not the one he’s going to have to get used to.  It’s calming enough.

“A pregnancy test,” he whispers into the phone.

 

-

 

_People talk about how omegas are submissive.  How all they need is to be laid down and fucked properly, how that’s what their instincts and hormones tell them to do._

_People like that have never met Rey.  When Rey’s in Heat, he almost has to fight her for control when he wants it, which he’s not sure he does. There’s something unbelievably powerful about watching her push him down, suck his dick, climb on him and ride him for almost an hour while her tits bounce and her face looks like she’s ascended into heaven._

_“Don’t you dare,” she hisses at him when he makes to sit up, wanting to bury his face in those tits of hers, bouncing so vigorously with the intensity of her movements.  Her leg muscles are bulging, her hands are gripping them for balance and her hazel eyes are locked on him._

_“Dare?” he asks, his voice a low growl._

_“I want to look at you.  I want you to look at me.”_

_“Look, but don’t touch?  Is that what you’re telling me?”_

_In response, minx that she is, she squeezes herself over him and says, “You are touching.”_

_It’s the wrong move and he starts to growl as he sits up, grabbing her wrists so she can’t push him back down.  He bites at the gland on her neck and she gasps and comes and while she’s lost in the pounding of her heart he pushes her down on the bed, pinning her hands down with one of his so he can twist one of her nipples as he jerks his hips against hers as hard as he can.  She wriggles underneath him, and he thinks it’s because she wants to be on top again, but that’s done for the day—done unless she lets him press himself against her, lets him hold her._

_“Asshole,” she pants at him and he can feel her aftershocks around his dick._

_“What were you really expecting?”  He nips at her neck again and she keens into him._

_“That’s not_ fair _when I’m in Heat.”  He changes his nips to licks and she lets out an “Oh fuck,” which makes him grin into her skin._

_“Not fair?  I make you cum and it’s not fair?”_

_Her teeth find his gland and she bites down—hard—and now it’s his turn to feel a rush of blood, to feel his cock swell with his knot to fill her up and lock her to him.  He buries his face in her neck, breathing her in, wrapping his arms around her._

_She smacks him.  “Asshole,” she repeats._

_“You love me.”_

_“Asshole.  One of these days I’m going to make you beg to come and I’m not going to let you.”_

_“Are you?”_

_“You’re just going to be hot, and hard, and tormented and you’re going to remember this moment and think, wow I should have just let Rey ride me until she was spent.  How blessed I am to have her but I couldn’t just once watch her ride me.”_

_“I look forward to it.”_

_“Asshole.”_

 

_-_

 

His mom calls him while he’s still lying on the couch, waiting for Rey. 

“Sweetheart, is something wrong?”

“Did your scent change when you were pregnant?” 

“I don’t know,” she says slowly.  “I assume it did.  Your dad never mentioned anything, but he and I never talked about scents much.”  Dad’s a beta, mom’s an alpha, and Ben shouldn’t exist because it’s “statistically improbable” that a male beta can impregnate a female alpha.  But here he is, his face pressed into a couch cushion that smells so much like Rey his chest hurts.  _It’s going to be gone soon,_ he thinks.  _This smell. It’s going to be gone._

It’s not that the other scent smelled bad, but it’s not what home smells like.  He’ll get used to it.  His body is telling him to go and bury his face in her pillow right now, to memorize it because she’s his, and that child is his, and he’s supposed to protect both of them—especially as she gets bigger and more tired and more full of their baby.

Instead he clings to the cushion and realizes that his mother is waiting for him to speak.  “Rey smelled different today,” he mumbles. “And we started trying during her last Heat.”

He hears a sharp intake of breath.  He hadn’t told her that yet.  Now she knows. 

“Well,” mom says slowly, her voice carefully neutral, “I’m lead to believe that Heats aren’t good for much when you’re not trying for a baby but they’re effective when you are. Have you told Rey?”

“She’s on her way home with a pregnancy test.”

“But you think she’s pregnant.”

“I know she is.”

Ben’s stomach curls into a knot and he lies there, the phone pressed to his ear.

“I love you sweetheart,” his mother whispers at last.  “And I’m so, _so_ happy for you.  And I can’t wait to meet her.”

“Or him.”

“Or her.”

“This is a pointless debate,” he mutters.

“Says you.  I have so many dresses I want to pass on to _someone_ and Rey’s too tall.”

“Between me and Rey, do you really think our kid’s going to be short?”

“Well, your father and I had a freakishly tall kid—why couldn’t your kid be unexpectedly short?”

He laughs.  He hears Rey’s car in the driveway and says, “She just got home.  I’ll talk to you later.”

“Let me know.  I know you’re not supposed to talk about it early on, but the cat’s out of the bag on this one and don’t you dare leave me in the lurch.”

“Love you, mom.”

“Love you, sweetheart.”

Rey lets herself into the house and doesn’t say a word as she heads into the bedroom.  Ben gets up off the couch and follows her but she’s closed the door to the bathroom.  He hears her opening a cardboard box, hears her peeing, hears her flushing the toilet and washing her hands before she opens the door again.

She takes a deep breath. “Did you divine this, or—”

“Your pillow smells different,” he said quietly and he takes a step towards her and runs his nose against her gland.  There it is—that new scent, deeper and earthier and not quite Rey.  “You smell different.”

Rey runs her fingers over her neck and brings them to her nose.  Then she steps past him and presses her nose into the pillow on the bed. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Have you ever been able to scent yourself?”

“On you I can.  When I’m in Heat, I can.” 

Ben follows her and runs his thumb over her neck until he knows it’s good and covered with her. Then he raises it to her nose.

She closes her eyes.

“Oh.”

And she wraps her arms around him tightly, burying her face in his chest.  He presses his nose to her hair and breathes her in.  This is what she smells like, now.  This is what his mate smells like, this is what home smells like, what their child smells like.  She’s there with him, and they’ve made a child together. 

“Are you—are you getting hard?”

“Seems to be happening.” She looks up at him and he rests his forehead against hers.  “I love you.”

“I love you,” she replies automatically.  Then she bites her lip.  “Is it a good scent?  This new one? You like it?”

He closes his eyes again and breathes in. 

There are layers to this scent.  The deeper and earthier layer he’d caught first melt into something almost musky and underneath that—

There.  There that is.  A hint of Rey. 

She nuzzles into him. “You just got harder.”

“I know.”

“I just want you to know that I know.  I take it that means you like it?”

“It’s you.  Of course I like it.”

She pushes him down onto the bed and tugs at his jeans, unbuttoning and unzipping until they’re down by his ankles, not bothering to take them fully off as she turns her attention to the ratty button-down she’d worn to the garage that morning.  Ben finishes removing his pants and tugs his t-shirt over his head as she shimmies her own jeans down her legs.  Then she climbs on top of him and his fingers find her slit, rubbing at it.

“I’m going to be too big to do this soon,” she says, her stomach pressed against his.  “I’m gonna be huge.”

He finds her gland and sucks at it and she moans and he feels more of her slick start to dribble out of her.  He rubs it into her folds.  Then, mostly because he’s curious, he brings his fingers to his lips and sucks on them. Then he grins at her.  “You still taste like you.”

“Good to know, because when I’m too pregnant to ride you, you know you’re going to have to eat me out.”

“Every day if you want.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“What about promises I want to keep?”  He nips at her lower lip before kissing his way down her neck down her sternum.  He looks up at her from between her breasts.  She’s watching him, and if she’d been frustrated with him at all this morning, that is gone from her eyes.

“You’re gonna get bigger breasts to suck on soon,” she teases, running her hand through his hair. “Was this all a ploy for that?”

“You caught me.  All of my protestations that I like your tits as they are have been a lie.”

“I knew it.”

She reaches her hand down between them and a moment later he’s inside her and he closes his eyes and smells.  _This is Rey,_ he thinks to himself as she starts to ride him, as he feels her slick coating his cock.  _This is our child, and Rey.  This is us.  That’s what us smells like._

Because, he realizes, it does.  That earthier scent—that’s him.  Him mixed with her, a warning to other alphas that not only is she claimed, she’s pregnant. She’s his, and he’s hers, and he wants nothing more than for her to cover him in this scent, for them to share it the way they share that life growing in her. 

When they’ve both spent themselves, Rey gets up and goes back into the bathroom, and Ben watches her. She’s so slim and muscular—vestiges of years when she didn’t have anyone but herself to take care of her.  Now she has him.  And he has her.  (“ _I like taking care of you.  You take care of me.”_ )

“In case you were wondering,” she says from the bathroom, holding up the plastic stick.  “I’m pregnant.”


	2. Chapter 2

Ben glares at the screen behind the counter. _Delayed. Estimated Time of Departure: 6:15pm._

_@KOR.Moka: Why are you still online? Don’t you have a pregnant wife to get home to?_

_@KOR.Kylo: Flight’s delayed._

_@KOR.Moka: Oof. Sorry about that._

_@KOR.Kylo: :ragedeath:_

_@KOR.Moka: :plusone:_

He turns back to his email. There’s a long one from Snoke, detailing several projects that he’s going to be placing Ben on.

Ben is bad at diplomatic emails. And how to remind his overbearing boss that he’s going to be out on paternity leave for a full month about halfway through all of these projects is…well, he’s lucky he’s on his way to his mom’s. She’ll know how to help. (“ _Just tell him to fuck the fuck right off,_ ” Rey had said over the phone the night before. How he wished he could, sometimes.)

He glances back up at the screen. _Estimated Time of Departure: 7:00pm_

He groans, closes his computer and pulls out his phone, calling his mom. “I’m not going to land until at least nine,” he says, “and that’s if they don’t keep delaying the flight.”

“Dad’ll come get you. Just let us know when you’re boarding.”

 _Great_ , he thinks to himself but knows better than to say, especially since his dad will likely have to be up significantly past nine if they keep delaying the flight. _Be grateful,_ he reminds himself. But it’s hard to be grateful for his dad sometimes.

“Have you heard from Rey at all?” he asks.

“She’s upstairs resting. She got an earlier flight when she saw the weather report.”

“Oh.”

He’s even grumpier now. FirstOrder pays for his flights whenever he goes into headquarters, and he does not doubt that they would have paid the undoubtedly exorbitant price for his ticket change to visit his parents for his mom’s and uncle’s birthday. Except that Snoke had dragged him into a meeting about product roadmapping and that had been that. He leans his head back and stares at the ceiling.

“We’ll save you a plate,” his mother says. “But you should eat. It’s always worse when you don’t eat.”

“Thanks,” he mutters.

The call ends and he calls Rey.

“You’re delayed?” she asks before even saying hello.

“Till at least seven.”

“Ugh, I’m sorry.”

“Mom says you’re already there.”

“Yup—just got here. Flying sucks when you’re pregnant. I could smell everything and I did not want to.”

Ben closes his eyes. He can imagine her lying there in the bed he’d grown up in, her stomach stretching over their daughter and her fingers toying with the blanket underneath her. She looks radiant in his mind’s eye. She’s burying her nose in pillows, looking for a trace of him in that room.

“I wish I could smell you,” he mutters into the phone. He is in a public space, and betas can be remarkably judgmental when they hear shit like this.

“Your room smells so much like you even though you’re not here. But it’s like…I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Angrier?”

“I was going to say younger, somehow, but sure. Angrier.”

“You can’t smell me at this airport right now. I’d give angry teenaged me a run for his money.”

“Don’t beat up the airport staff. They’re just trying to get you to me and I don’t want you to get on the no-fly list.”

“I’ll contain myself.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“I’ll stay up for you,” Rey tells him.

Ben glances at the screen. They haven’t changed the ETD. “Don’t worry about that. You’ve had a long day and I don’t know when I’m going to land.”

“I slept till eleven and then flew. I wouldn’t call that long.”

“You’re the one complaining about how you’re stamina’s dead and you’re always tired and could sleep for years.”

“Ben. I’m trying to talk about a different kind of stamina here. A little more subtly because I don’t know how overhearable I am in your parents house.”

Ben’s eyebrows twitch. “So I take it you don’t want me to make you scream tonight. That you don’t want my parents—”

“Shut up and get here, will you?” she growls, and Ben grins into the phone. He misses her, misses coming back to a room that smells like her and not like every other person who’s passed through the hotel he’s been staying at near the office. He misses resting his hand on her stomach and feeling the baby wiggling around inside her, misses talking to his kid through her skin, promising that he loves them both and that he’ll keep them safe and meaning every word.

“I’m trying,” he murmurs, his voice soft and Rey makes a noise. They sit there quietly on the phone with each other for a few minutes before he goes off to find something to eat.

When he returns, the flight has been delayed another half an hour and Ben opens his computer to more emails from Snoke.

 

-

 

_“This is all your fault,” Rey tells him as she tugs her shirt off. There are stretch marks on her breasts and on her stomach and Ben has taken to rubbing soothing lotion into her angry skin every night. It’s become a ritual for him, and one he takes seriously as Rey stretches out in front of him and he pumps some of it onto his hands._

_“We established that,” he says as he begins to rub his hands over her belly. She’s not huge yet—the doctor says that the baby is small, but not unhealthily so—but neither of them like fucking with him on top anymore, even if her back is sore. They have a shared irrational fear of him crushing the baby somehow. Rey’s pregnancy has given her the nose of her Heat, so while rubbing lotion into her skin isn’t necessarily a sexual act, it usually devolves quite quickly._

_“If you didn’t smell so damn good,” she mutters, sitting up into his hands rubbing her nose to his neck. “Maybe I wouldn’t spend all my days wanting to jump your bones.”_

_“I like you wanting to jump my bones,” Ben can’t help but say, tweaking her nipples lightly and she glares at him. He kisses her and pulls her onto his lap. He rubs his fingers along her slit—she’s dripping, she’s always dripping these days—before he eases himself into her._

_The glare fades as she rocks her hips into him, slides herself up and down along his length until she’s pushing him back down on the bed and bending over him, her lips on his gland, licking at it in a way that is positively divine as it matches her motions on his dick. Ben kicks them to the middle of the bed and runs his hands up and down her sides, circling her nipples, finding the tense spots in her lower back that have been plaguing her since he impregnated her. She moans into his skin as he rubs at the muscles and goes still for a moment._

_“That good?”_

_“Don’t stop.”_

_He kisses the top of her head and she stays perfectly still, her head resting against his collarbone as he rubs, and rubs, and rubs._

_There are many things he likes about being an alpha—and plenty of things he doesn’t—but there’s a special joy that comes from taking care of her. That, he thinks, is part of what makes him enjoy sex with her so much—that he experiences the dual joy of pleasuring her and taking care of her while he loses his goddamn mind in how good she feels. But if there’s one thing he could pause mid-sex to do, it’s this, easing her pain, making her feel a little bit better, knowing that he’s taking care of his omega, the mother of his child, his mate, his love, and that she knows he will always do that._

_He can smell her contentedness—a flavor of her scent that doesn’t usually come pre-orgasm, and he nudges his hips under her. She sighs and shifts slightly, raising her hips a little so that he can rock a little more easily. And he does, pushing into her and rubbing her back until her own arousal has her hips rucking unintentionally against his. Her orgasm catches her by surprise and his follows not long after. He keeps rubbing her back as he shifts them both onto their sides and she snuggles into his chest._

_“Sorry about the backache,” he breathes into her hair. “Not about the horniness.”_

_He keeps rubbing her back until she’s snoring._

 

_-_

 

Ben jerks awake when the plane hits the ground and immediately, his phone is in his hand. He turns off airplane mode and opens a text from Rey that had come in while he’d dozed.

_I’m still planning to be up for you. Text when you land._

_Just landed. Taxiing now._

_Good. Text when you get off the highway?_

_Do you want second by second updates?_

_I just have plans is all._

_When you come in, don’t have your dad right behind you or else he’ll get a view._

_…_

_Do you want me to shower before I come in?_

_I want you yesterday. You can shower later._

_I smell like airplane._

She pauses, then,

_Fast shower._

He smiles at the phone for a moment, feeling fortified. Then he takes a deep breath and phones his dad.

“Heya, kid.”

“Just landed,” he says as neutrally as he can manage.

“Ok. I’m by baggage claim. Did you check anything?”

“Yeah, I have a suitcase to wait on.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

“See you in a few.”

He hangs up quickly.

Things are easier with his dad when they remain impersonal, focused on the task at hand, emotionless. This will be the first time he’ll have been alone with his dad since longer than he can remember. Probably around when he and Rey got married. Has it really been that long?

He searches his brain, but it’s all coding and Snoke and _don’t you want that promotion? Head of Product and Engineering is attainable if you can just prove your worth. You could be the next Vader._

Once, that might have excited him.

Now he just wants to get to Rey.

Rey, who’s got plans for the night, and is clearly planning some kind of show for him. Rey, who’s had to rub lotion into her own skin this week because he’s been at headquarters. Rey, whose heart beats in time with his and he can feel every inch of distance between them even now and it crushes him a little bit.

The deplaning is quick enough, and it’s not long before he’s making his way to the carousel where his father is waiting for him.

“You look blasted, kiddo,” his dad says, clapping him on the back. They’ve never been much for hugging. That’s him and mom. His dad doesn’t do affection well. ( _“Has he taken his suppressants?”_ It still stings even now when he’s angry, whether he’s stuck in traffic, not sure how to write emails to Snoke, trying to keep from flipping a shit at the airline workers who have no control over the weather. _It’s not being an_ _alpha that makes me mad, dad, it’s being treated like being one is more important than me._ )

“Long day,” Ben shrugs.

“Work ok?”

“Yeah. It’s fine.” His dad has no idea how to understand the work that Ben does. When he’d gotten promoted to manager, his dad had been pleased. He can understand what manager means, even if he has no idea what infrastructure engineer means.

“Miss home?”

“Yeah,” he says. He spots his bag and grabs it from the carousel, extending the handle so that it’ll roll behind him. The wheel squeaks a bit as they walk towards the short term parking garage.

“I can oil that up for you when we get to the house.”

“Thanks.”

Dimly, vaguely, distantly, he’s aware that this is more of an effort than his dad has put into him in a while. _Am I supposed to be appreciative?_

They throw his suitcase into the second seat of his dad’s beaten up old piece of junk. “This piece of junk still runs?”

“Had to replace the engine last year, but she’s still got it in her.”

“They make better cars now, dad. Ones that use less gas and everything.”

“The Falcon’s fine.”

The roads are lined with several inches of white snow, and the highway is well salted when they pull onto it. Ben expects his dad to reach for the radio, the way he always does to fill the silence, but instead, Han Solo says,

“You nervous? About the kid?”

Ben shoots him a look. His father’s eyes are squarely on the road, his face is neutral, and Ben…

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a big deal, having a kid. Changes everything. You nervous about it?”

“No,” he says mulishly, though more out of annoyance than anything else.

“Now hang on,” his dad says. “I didn’t mean to imply that you—that I—will you just listen to your old man for a second?”

“Sure.” Ben turns back to the road. They’re six exits and twenty minutes away from the house he grew up in, the house that Rey’s waiting for him in, the house that he’ll be visiting for holidays until he dies or they move, his kids in tow. _Grandpa’s gonna pick them up at the airport too._ They’ll be excited about that, he can tell. Somehow, he suspects his father will make a better distant grandfather than distant father. He sags, suddenly unsure.

“You learn a lot about yourself having a kid. And it changes all sorts of things you took for granted. It changes your relationship with your wife, with your friends, with your job. It’s a big deal. And that’s not to say it’s a bad change, but it’s still change.”

“You’re trying to convince me that I wasn’t a bad change for you?” He has to be diplomatic with Snoke about project load. He doesn’t have to be diplomatic with his dad about fucking anything. “Work didn’t change that much for you.”

“No,” he agrees. “No, it didn’t. But I changed how I did it because of you. And I don’t regret that. But there’s still a lot….a lot I’d do differently now.”

“Yeah?” Ben doesn’t believe that.

But then again, he’s sitting in a car with his dad at ten thirty at night and the radio isn’t on. He swallows.

“Yeah,” his dad says. “I can’t change how I did it, but fatherhood’s scary. And I don’t want…I don’t want you to feel like you can’t come talk to me about it. Even if you take my advice and run the other way with it.”

“I was gonna say,” Ben muttered. He glances at his dad.

His hair is grey, his skin is wrinkly and he is glancing at Ben out of the corner of his eye.

Ben can’t remember the last time his dad offered to be there for him. Can’t remember the last time he wanted that. Can’t remember the last time his throat tightened because of his dad.

He blinks, his eyes suddenly stinging.

Maybe he didn’t care much when Ben was a kid. But maybe he’s starting to care. ( _“Better late than never?”_ Rey asked during the second Heat they’d shared, before he’d claimed her, before she’d claimed him, when he’d asked if she’d felt what he’d felt during the last Heat. _“Yeah, I did,”_ she grinned as she kissed him. _“Now fuck me, please, I can’t bear it.”_ )

“Thanks, dad,” he mumbles, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees his dad swallow. ( _“You and your father both—you both swallow when you’re nervous,”_ his mother had told him when he was sixteen. _“You’ve got my long face, but your dad’s mannerisms, and I don’t think you got much of Luke. Which is fine! That’s fine!”_ )

Ben reaches for the radio, and he can practically feel his father’s relief. This is about as much emotional vulnerability as either of them can handle, and maybe he’d do things differently now than when Ben was a kid, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely changed.

Ben relaxes to the sound of the baseball game—the final round before the World Series—and tries to swallow the lump out of his throat.

 

-

 

_He gets back from the grocery store to find Rey in the bathtub, a vanilla lavender candle sitting on the sink and filling the air with a calming fragrance that doesn’t quite cover the scent of her pregnancy. Her belly is poking up through the water and her hair is up in a pony tail and her eyes are closed as she lies there in the water._

_“You look relaxed,” he says to her as he pees._

_“I’d be a lot more relaxed if you peed in the other bathroom,” she teases._

_“Almost done.” He finishes, flushes, and turns to face her as he tucks himself back in his pants. “Do you want anything? I picked up some more chamomile lemon tea for you.” She’s been drinking it constantly lately, and he wants her to be as content as possible. He wants every part of her body to be at peace, wants their child to be as content as the mother she is growing within._

_Rey’s eyes open, and she half rolls them. “Why’d you put your pants back on?”_

_“I didn’t want to—”_

_“Get over here.”_

_And he grins, and drops his pants, tugs his shirt off and climbs into the bath behind her. Water sloshes over the ridge of the tub and onto the tile floor as he settles into the water, his long legs bending at the knee on either side of Rey. He’ll clear that up later—after he makes sure that Rey doesn’t slip getting out of the tub._

_He wraps his arms around her and runs his lips up and down her neck, breathing her in._

_“Unkar is putting me on fewer shifts.” He can’t tell from her tone if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, and asks her. “I don’t know. I want to do more because I like the work.” She’s a mechanic by choice—she likes putting things together. She’s working her way—very slowly—through an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. They haven’t talked about how she plans to balance school, a baby, and a job. They haven’t needed to too much, since Ben works remotely and can be around during the day when Rey’s out, so long as work isn’t on fire. “But it’s a relief. I am getting tired faster.”_

_“Do you think you’ll stop after she’s born?” he asks, thumbing over the line of hair that has been growing fairly thickly between her belly button and her groin. “Focus on school?”_

_“I don’t know,” Rey whispers. “I’m afraid to plan. She’s going to change so much.”_

_Ben kisses her. “Only good changes.”_

_“We can hope,” Rey sounds hesitant. She turns her head and kisses the side of his mouth._

_She’s quiet for a moment, then, “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll probably end up quitting when she’s born. School will be easier to schedule around a baby, right?”_

_“I don’t know,” Ben says. “I didn’t have a baby when I was in school.” Rey rolls her eyes and he adds, quickly, “But we’ll make it work. I’ll help you make it work. I’m here to take care of you, and that means helping you do whatever you—” she cuts him off with a kiss._

_“I know,” she whispers. “I love you. And I know.”_

_He kisses her again and he continues to rub his hand over their daughter. Then his hand drifts lower under the water and she sighs and spreads her legs, and he begins to stroke._

 

-

 

The house is quiet when he and dad get in, and they tip-toe their way up the stairs. Ben takes a deep breath outside of the door of his old bedroom, not entirely sure what to expect. He cracks it, and peeks inside.

Rey is asleep, a book open in one hand, the other resting on her belly. The light is on next to her and it makes her glow. Ben places his suitcase by the dresser, crosses to the bed and pulls the book out of her hand, dog-earing the page and placing it on the bedside table at her side. Then he presses a kiss to her forehead, closing his eyes and letting the scent of her fill his nose for a moment.

He’d gotten unused to the smell of her pregnancy in the past few days apart. His body is yearning for that scent of home, the one he’d claimed, the one that is his mate, and it takes him longer than he’d like to feel as though the scent she’s giving off is normal.

He takes a deep breath, and retreats out of the bedroom. He grabs a towel from the hall closet and takes a quick shower, using some of his father’s shampoo because it’s what’s there.

He brushes his teeth, washes his face, and glances at himself in the mirror. There are dark circles under his eyes and he does, to use his dad’s word, look blasted.

He sighs and leaves the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist and slips into his bedroom again.

This time, Rey is naked on all fours, her cunt facing him when he comes through the door and his heart skips a beat at the sight of her. She does not look back at him, but he does see her vulva move from her flexing her vagina at him. In the lazy yellow light from the lamp, he thinks he sees her gleaming with slick already.

He closes the door behind him, and his feet take him to her and he buries his face between her legs, running his tongue over the length of her and groaning at the same time as her. He’s used to it again now, the scent of her pregnancy. It smells like a version of her, and the longer he licks at her, the more powerful that aftertaste of her mate scent becomes and he feels himself reacting to her the way she so clearly wants him to.

His heart is in his throat as he drags his tongue across her slit, pounding hot blood to the farthest reaches of his body. He curls his lips briefly around her clit and he hears her make a muffled noise into the pillow, clearly not wanting the sound to carry past the bedroom. _I want to make you scream,_ he thinks as he sucks her folds between his lips, rubbing her lips between his. _I want you to forget I was gone._

This is what home feels like—his lips at Rey’s cunt, his heart in his throat. Not this house, not his parents—just Rey and the way she tastes on his tongue, the way she’d waited up for him, even if she hates waiting.

And he doesn’t want her to wait anymore. He hates having made her wait, even though he can’t control the weather. He hates every second she’d waited for him in his bed, smelling him, wanting him when he wasn’t there, her gland probably throbbing dully because of the vestiges of his scent. He hadn’t had hers this past week and it had been hell—but having her scent but not her would have been a thousand times worse.

He brings his fingers to her clit, circling it lightly while he slides his tongue into her and he’d drown happily in the fluids she’s gushing, to breathe it in because this is what his life tastes like, the flavor of Rey coming hot on his tongue because when she comes it’s just the flavor of his mate and none of the other hormones. He hears her gasping into the pillow and knows he’s moaning at the taste of her so fresh and transient on his tongue. She shifts, easing her clit away from his thumb and his face follows her movement, not ready to pull away just yet, not when her muscles are flexing like that. Not when there’s still more of her to drink down.

She waits for him to pull away. He does, after a time. He kisses one of her ass cheeks and murmurs, “How’s your back? Do you want to stay like that?”

“What do you want?” she asks.

“I want what you—”

“What do you want?” He can hear the eyeroll in her voice.

He stands, his cock bobbing in front of him and he’s suddenly painfully aware of how hard he is. Had he really lost himself so much in the taste of her that he could forget how much he needs to bury himself in her now? What does he want? He could laugh.

A moment later, he’s sheathed himself in her with a groan that she matches, his fingers digging into the skin of her hips and his eyes roll into the back of his head when he feels her clench around his length. She pushes herself back against him too, matching his speed with equal intensity and it’s not long before her head drops onto the pillow again and she’s mewling from the way he’s striking her at this angle. Yes, she’s always liked this angle, since their very first Heat together, he’s known that the way his tip enters her—his height and hips send it right against her g-spot until she’s falling apart and him not far behind because how—how _—_ can he be expected to hold himself together when she’s falling apart on his dick?

Slowly, he pulls out of her and she falls over onto her side, looking up at him for the first time and she’s so blissed out that he can’t help but grin. He curls around behind her, licking at the gland in her neck because he knows it’ll soothe whatever her hormones have driven her to in the past week. She wriggles closer to him and he traces the curve of her belly.  As if she knows he’s there, his daughter squirms inside Rey.

“We woke her up,” Rey grins at him before her face grows a little more serious.  “I hate it when you’re gone,” she whispers. “I know you’re not really gone, but I hate it all the same.” (Rey, he knows, had screamed for her parents to come back for her, had begged and pleaded and sobbed and done all she could to find them, had waited for them fruitlessly for years. She hates being left behind even more than he does.)

“I hate being gone,” he whispers into her gland. (How clearly he remembers sinking his teeth into it—“ _Is this right?_ ”—it had felt so strange, something no human should do until she’d cried out and that sound—that’s the sound she makes when she’s coming, and he can feel the throbbing of the gland in his teeth as the pressure of them break the membrane and just like that she’s his she’s his she’s his his mate his his his.) “But I’m back now. I’m back, and I love you.”

“I know,” she whispers and she brings his palm to her lips and kisses it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today was an exhausting day and I wanted to post this to end on a positive note, but wasn't sure I'd have the energy to reread, and then said "fuck it" because it's been A Day and sometimes you just want to post shameless pregnant reylo fluff. Anyway thank you all for your lovely lovely reviews that always put such a smile on my face.

Rey wakes him in the middle of the night, her eyes far too alert for the hour.

“What,” he growls before his senses catch up to his sleep fogged brain. The light is on, and Rey is not in the bed next to him. The bed is damp, and far more than it usually is after they’ve fucked, more than it is even when Rey’s in Heat and dripping so much he worries about keeping her hydrated. The smell of the wet is sharp in his nose and finally, finally, he understands.

He climbs from the bed, hurrying to put on pants and a shirt. They’ve had a bag prepared for over a week now with clothes and supplies and Rey is in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and pulling a comb through her hair.

“Did you call Dr. Kanata?” he asks and she shakes her head. Ben pulls out his phone dials and, because it’s not in the overnight bag, chucks his charger in there too.

Dr. Kanata picks up on the first ring. “Water broke?”

“Yes,” Ben says.

“I’ll see you at the hospital,” the old woman says cheerily and Ben wonders how anyone could possibly be cheerful at this hour of the night.

He glances at Rey. She’s standing there, her hands on her lower back, a look of trepidation on her face. He reaches a hand out to her and she takes it. Silently, they head out to the car.

When they’re turning onto one of the main roads, Rey lets out a moan of pain and when he looks over at her, her eyes are closed, her face is scrunched and his heart lurches. “Rey,” he murmurs, not entirely sure what to say because his head is sending so many instincts through him. _She’s hurting stop the car. She’s in labor keep going. She needs you. She needs you to keep going._ He can smell her pain, can smell her adrenaline and everything else that her body is shooting through her in anticipation of their child. It makes him almost dizzy. It makes his stomach roil.

“I’m fine,” she tells him, but he can smell the lie. “I’m fine let’s just—” she flinches, and Ben panics.

“How far apart are they supposed to be?”

“That wasn’t one,” she says. “She just kicked is all.”

“She’s causing enough trouble. Can’t she stay still?” Ben mutters and he’s relieved that Rey laughs at that.

“She’s nervous like me,” Rey responds. “Big old world coming through.”

“How are you calm?” he demands.

“Because you’re freaking out, and I need you to focus on driving. When we’re at the hospital it’s my turn.”

That, more than anything, makes Ben get a grip. His mate is giving birth to his child and she’s accounting for his nerves? No. That’s not even him failing as an alpha—that’s him failing as a person. He takes a deep breath and reaches his hand over to take hers. He squeezes it, and she squeezes back, a little harder than usual.

 

-

 

_“I really don’t see why we have to paint the room again.”_

_“I’m nesting, Ben. I want to make it perfect for her.”_

_“Nesting makes you sound like a bird.”_

_“Fine. Denning. I’m denning.”_

_He brushes his lips against her temple and she leans against him for a moment. She won’t admit it—she’ll never admit it—but she’s getting to be too tired to walk these days. Nesting has meant sitting in the room they’re turning into a nursery and making Ben build a crib, a shelf, a changing table, while she sits in the rocking chair that they’d moved from the living room. Of course she hadn’t thought about painting the room’s walls until after they’d gotten everything set up._

_“Dove?” he asks her, reaching out and plucking the card sample off the rack. Rey has a sharper eye for colors than he does, and she holds it up next to the stack she’s already considering._

_“Yeah, I suppose,” she says._

_“If you’re not enthused, we don’t need to—”_

_“I’m thinking about it,” she says._

_He presses a kiss to her temple again, and she rolls her eyes. “I know you’re just humoring me.”_

_“I’m not,” he says at once, and realizes she has caught him in a trap. He grimaces and she laughs._

_“I’m pregnant, not stupid,” she teases, pinching his side._

_“I never thought you were stupid,” he says carefully. Her moods are swinging a lot these days, more than he’s experienced with her before. Only two days before, she’d come home from the grocery store in tears, sobbing about how she would make a horrible mother because she didn’t have a mother to teach her how to be one in the first place. He’d held her for over an hour while she’d sobbed and had cooked her a dinner of what favorite foods she could still eat because pregnancy had taken away some of her all time favorites, and by the time they were curled up in bed together, she was laughing and talking about baby names. It was giving him whiplash, not knowing if he was going to make it better or worse, and only ever wanting to make it better._

_Rey’s eyes go distant for a moment, and her face falls slightly. “Rey?”_

_She shakes herself. “It’s nothing.”_

_“Are you going to be crying about nothing in twenty minutes?” She gives him a withering look._

_“I suppose I did just tell you not to humor me.” She makes a face. “It wasn’t until just now that…” She stops, and makes another face. “Realizations upon realizations.”_

_“Pick one,” Ben says, and she looks up at him._

_“I just hadn’t realized how_ much _you were humoring me until just now when you dug in. You always dig in. You don’t humor me. Humoring me is nice, but this is you. I missed that.”_

_Ben blinks at her. “I…I didn’t realize I was doing that either,” he says slowly._

_“I think we’re both running on instinct,” Rey says. “Let’s not forget to be us too.”_

_“Done,” he agrees, hoping he can stick to it. For Rey, he can see it going either way. He never wants to hurt her, and sometimes when he digs in…_

She wants me to. She thinks it’s better. _Is it still? They aren’t who they were when they met, after all. He doesn’t need to force her to face hard truths because she’s stumbling blindly in a reality that’s not what she thinks it is—and she doesn’t need to drag him kicking and screaming to productively confront the pain of his past._

_“And the other one?” he asks her._

_“I’ve just been feeling stupidly lately. I can’t focus in class, my readings are hard. And I’m scared having a baby will only make it worse.” She ducks her head as though she doesn’t want to look at him._

_“You won’t know until you know,” he says, feeling remarkably unhelpful. “But if it helps…” He takes a deep breath. He hadn’t been planning to bring this up until after she’d been born. “I was thinking about taking time off work. Quitting FirstOrder for a while to help with her.”_

_Rey stares at him. He can see her mind jumping through questions, tracing through every thought he’s been having for the past few months. Then her face breaks into a grin. “Tell Snoke to go fuck himself,” she says with glee._

_Ben bends his head to kiss her and murmurs into her lips, “I will, but only after I’ve taken my paid paternity leave.”_

 

_-_

 

The texts to his parents have been sent.

_We’re at the hospital. Details forthcoming._

The emails to work and his vacation responder have been put into place.

_The kid’s coming. Talk to you in a month._

_Thank you for reaching out. I am currently on paternity leave. If you have urgent need of assistance, please email the KOR Infrastructure team at kor@firstorder.org._

And the only thing left is him and Rey and the riot of smells in the room as the doctors and nurses prepare her for birth.

“Did you text Finn?” Rey asks. There’s sweat on her forehead and her face is flushed and she sounds so tired already.

Ben dives for his phone, which he’d plugged into the wall and decided to thoroughly ignore until all this is over.

He ignores the text from his mother, seeing the opening _We’ll hit the road for the airport_ before the preview vanished and he sends a text to Finn.

_At the hospital. Rey’s in labor. I’ll keep you posted._

Rey gives him a weak smile, and a moment later her face is contorting again. Ben crosses back to the bedside seat and grabs her hand. She squeezes it so hard he feels some of his bones pop.

“Shit,” Rey moans. “Did I—”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Ben lies. At least, he doesn’t think she broke anything. She’s got a strong grip—comes from having worked in the garage for so long—and he does not doubt that she could break his hand. But he needs to be calm now. Because god knows she can’t be.

He leans forward and rubs his nose against her cheek. Everything smells wrong, everything smells abnormal and Rey is lying there groaning and trembling and he did this to her. This is because of him, there’s no way around that. They’d decided on a child together, but he was the one that had gone and put his penis in her and done this. That blissful day of her Heat all those months ago, when he’d bet correctly she’d be pregnant after her first Heat off suppressants, suddenly does not seem worth it.

He can smell her pain, smell her fear, smell his own, all mixed together with that clinical cold hospital smell.

But he’s not allowed to freak out. He’s not. He’d promised himself that in the car. They’ll make it through this, and then they’ll have a tiny human to take care of and shit this is all happening so very fast. How had he felt prepared for this? His dad had warned him when they’d visited his parents a few months ago, but he hadn’t listened and it was the first time his dad had actively tried to care in years and fuck.

“How’re we doing, mama?” comes Dr. Kanata’s voice as she comes into the room.

“Day at the beach,” Rey jokes and Dr. Kanata gives her a knowing smile. She settles down and pops Rey’s legs up into the stirrups on the table.

“I think we’re about ready for the big show,” she says. She glances at Ben. “Dad, keep hold of her. She’ll need all the help she can get.”

Ben’s hand tightens in Rey’s and Rey turns to look at him, her face blazing with determination. All of the fear is gone now. She’s ready. _She hates waiting._

_And the waiting’s done._

Another contraction wracks her body, and Dr. Kanata tells her to push, and she lets out a war cry and does.

 

-

 

_The first time he scents Rey is unlike anything he’s ever experienced. He’s been taking suppressants for years, ever since he started presenting and his pediatrician had said that life could be perfectly normal for alphas under suppressants. His dad, who just wanted a normal life for him, had signed the paperwork immediately, not realizing that that normal meant “normal for a beta” and would make Ben feel like a freak all his life._

_All his life until Rey._

_It feels like a page in the story of someone else’s life—taking his car in because the check engine light is on, and the cute mechanic turning as if in slow motion, smelling like everything that heaven could possibly smell like. Ben’s been on suppressants most of his life, but this little omega—she doesn’t seem to take them at all and it fucks him up. He’s rude, he’s condescending, he’s unnecessarily aggressive, feeling like all those alpha stereotypes that have never seemed to fit him properly because he’s on suppressants, he’s good, he’s knows that no means no._

_He spends the next day brooding because now that he’s scented her, his life will never be the same. Something clicked into place the moment he knew she existed and that—that is scarier by far than the sensation that his suppressants can’t contain his desire to rut right now. Rut_ her _._

_There’s disgust on her face when he goes into the shop to check on his car. The engine is busted, and they’ll need to keep it another three days at least, she tells him, her anger only heightening the way she smells because it’s got her blood up, flowing through those scent glands in her neck, her wrist, her cunt. And for her, he can try to control himself. He does his best to apologize for his behavior—something she seems to want nothing of—and that night he abuses himself to blindness on the memory of her glares and the thin, disapproving line of her lips._

_He’s so distracted by the memory her scent that’s still in his damn nose that he forgets to pick up his refill for his suppressants and when he goes to pick up his car, fixed at long last, he sees the way her head shoots up when he enters the garage, the way her nostrils flare and knows she understands, that she knows the truth at least. He doesn’t talk to her though every instinct he has is drawing him to her. She hasn’t come near him, and if his scent isn’t enough to make her want him then he’ll have to let it go. Be normal, like his dad always wanted him to be._

_At least she might understand now. At least she might understand why he’d behaved the way he did. Why he’s trying not to behave that way now._

_A week later, his phone is ringing during a pairing session and he frowns because he wonders if the garage had fucked up with a payment or something. When he picks up, it’s her on the other end of the line. She’s going into Heat, and he’s the only alpha she’s come across for miles and she can’t get his scent out of her nose, so can she please just come over and fuck him please her skin is about to fall off she needs it so badly._

_She comes over, she comes, and it feels like she’s coming home._

 

_-_

 

Ten fingers, ten toes, Rey’s hazel eyes, and Ben is in love for the second time.

He can’t take his eyes off her, off either of them, Rey’s exhausted face as she holds their daughter to her chest, and Hope…

Hope is perfect. He can smell her clearly through the room, oddly familiar as though she’d been part of Rey’s scent for the past nine months without Rey’s scent being explicitly Hope’s.

He snaps a picture and texts it to his parents, finally seeing the note that they’ll be flying in tonight—earliest flight they could catch—and is there anything they want Ben to pick up for them.

Ben can’t answer. His head is spinning. His head is spinning and every second he’s not looking at Hope is a second wasted.

She’d been born pink and bleeding and squalling with a thatch of thick dark hair. Now she is quiet, swaddled up tightly, staring up at her mother and letting instinct tell her that she is safe in this big wild world.

He can’t get over how small she is. He doesn’t think that he’ll ever be over how small she is. She’ll never be this small again.

A nurse takes her away for testing, and Ben comes and sits on the hospital bed next to Rey. He wraps his arm around her and she keens over sideways into him.

“Look what you did,” he whispers to her.

She is too tired to reply, but she knows she doesn’t have to. Instead she nuzzles into his neck, her tongue finding his gland and licking him, though whether to soothe him or herself he doesn’t know.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

Ben swallows. Beautiful doesn’t cover it, but he doesn’t know what does, so he says, “Yeah.” He kisses the top of her head. “I love you.”

She just keeps licking him and he knows she loves him too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To set expectations, the next chapter is somewhere between a chapter and an epilogue. Choose your own adventure when we get there!


	4. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It really is more of an epilogue than a chapter, and here it is in celebration of the fact that I don't have to go to Jury Duty tomorrow!!

“She’s asleep?”

“Yes, but I don’t know for how long. She _really_ doesn’t like what my hormones are doing to my milk.”

Ben knows. He’d heard the way Hope had wailed as Rey had tried to feed her. “I think we still have some in the freezer from when mom was babysitting if she’s too fussy.”

Rey pauses in the doorway, and he leans back in the bed, crossing his arms behind his head, amused at the dueling instincts at play.

This is Rey’s first Heat since Hope was born, and she wants nothing more than to leap onto him right now. He can smell the slick between her legs, can practically hear her heart beat a lurching tattoo against her chest as she stares at him with blown pupils, waiting for her on the bed.

She takes a deep breath and turns away, hurrying to the kitchen to check the freezer. “Aha!” he hears her shout triumphantly, and he hears the sound of plastic containers being placed on the counter. A moment later she’s back, practically running into the room and—true to his predictions—leaping on him, her lips at his throat as she tugs at his tented boxer shorts. He rips the cotton underwear she’s wearing off and a moment later she’s sliding onto him and humping her hips as hard as she can, while Ben tugs her shirt off from over her head.

He kisses along the neckline of her bra, knowing she won’t want him to take it off. She’s gotten finicky about that while breastfeeding, had blushed a furious red when she’d practically sprayed breastmilk the first time she’d come after the birth. Ben hadn’t cared, had licked her clean because he loves how she tastes—every taste she gives him—but after that, her bra had stayed firmly on her chest every time they’d fucked.

She rides him hard and fast until she is gasping, and then lets him take control now that they’ve taken the edge off. He sets a steady pace for her, lying back and watching her as her eyes drift closed, her mouth drifts open, and that flush spreads across her stomach and chest. He thumbs her clit lightly—not so much that she’s coming all over his dick again, but enough to tease her, to edge her, to make it so that those little noises she sometimes makes when he hits her cervix becomes increasingly steady, until she’s practically humming nonstop.

She smells like Rey again.

Her essence seeping out of her across his hips and onto the sheets, her scent passing through her skin, pulsing with her heart—even the sweet fragrance of her milk, leaking out of her as she loses control, as he makes her lose control, smells a little more like her today. Hope doesn’t like the flavor, but Ben…

He sits up and pulls one of the cups of her bra aside and licks at her nipple. It’s stiff and pink and he’s a grown man, he shouldn’t love the way her milk tastes like this, shouldn’t feel so nourished, and yet he does. He could drink her down forever—his mate, the mother of his child. It had only taken one Heat for them to make Hope together, his beautiful, loving, supportive, fertile mate. She could nourish the world with her breasts, has made a home of her loins. She runs her fingers through his hair, holding him to her chest, and moans as he flicks her clit. A moment later, she’s coming again, milk spurting out of her and he drinks it down, eager for any taste of her he can get.

“You did that on purpose,” she tells him breathlessly as she starts to come down from her high.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replies, looking up at her. He kisses the skin above her nipple and moves her bra back into place. Then, as fast as he can manage, he topples her onto her back, pulling her legs around his hips and driving into her as hard as he can, losing himself in the feel of her, the smell of her, the way she is his home and will be until he dies. And as his knot begins to swell, he buries his face in her neck and that’s Rey, that’s her, that’s his love, his everything. His heart is so full of her, so full of her, so full of her…

He lets himself collapse onto her, crushing her into the bed. He hadn’t for as long as she’d been showing and he loves the feeling of her, warm and wriggling under him, breathing nothing but him for a few moments while he comes back to himself.

“She’d better not start crying while we’re knotted,” Rey mumbles into his neck and he bursts out laughing.

“You think I couldn’t carry you to her?”

“ _Ben._ ”

“She’s too young to remember being tended to while her parents are stuck on each other. We’ll just have to remember not to let anything slip.”

Rey shoves him and he rolls them onto their sides.

“I could do it, though.”

“Stop showing off, alpha.” She kisses him, though, and he takes no sting from her words.

“She’ll just have to learn to cry her way through it, then, you heartless mother you.”

“She’s too young for that,” Rey snaps. “That’s the whole point.”

“I’ll get you to her. I promised I’d take care of you both and I meant that. And if it means that I have to bring my wife to my daughter while my dick is still literally pulsing cum into her, I’ll do it.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Rey mutters, and Ben kisses her and pulls her more tightly into his arms. She adjusts her hips slightly, throwing a leg over one of his to reduce the tension of his knot inside her. Then she closes her eyes, and sighs, and lets herself drift off to sleep.

 

-

 

Rey is still asleep when he wakes from his nap. Through the baby monitor, he can hear Hope fussing. He extracts himself from Rey’s arms and she makes a little grumpy noise before pressing her face into the spot he’d just vacated and burrowing down into the pillows. He presses his face to her hair, breathing her in, then he grabs a pair of clean boxers from the dresser and tugs them on awkwardly before slipping from the room.

Hope is awake and staring up at the starry mobile above her bed. She smiles the moment he comes into view and his heart stops right there. He scoops her up, checks her diaper, then pads into the kitchen. The containers of milk are defrosting on the counter, and he dumps one into a saucepan while Hope jaws at his shoulder.

“I smell like mom,” he murmurs to her, running his nose along the top of her head and kissing her forehead. She smells like Hope, as steadily like herself as she had the moment she’d been born.

When it’s been heated, he fumbles the milk into a bottle, managing to only spill a little bit on the counter before taking her back to the nursery. He settles in the rocking chair and tucks the bottle between her lips and she begins to drink down greedily. “That taste better?” he asks her. “Mom said you didn’t like how her milk tasted earlier.”

Hope keeps sucking away and he just sits there holding her to his bare chest, her tiny heart beat pounding strong through her whole body—the most beautiful song he has ever heard, the most beautiful song he will ever hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! And thanks also to all of you who totally caught my "has never had a child" mistake about microwaving breastmilk.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Come say hi on [tumblr](http://crossingwinter.tumblr.com/reylo)!


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